Residential neighbourhoods are suppose to be tranquil areas. They are thought to be quiet areas where families live and children play, but there are things that shatter that serenity into a perceived chaos. And that is situation Michelle Berry documents in her novel Interference.

Pages 4-5

Tom and Maria are busy raking the leaves. Tom is by the side of their front porch. Maria is out near the sidewalk. Their daughter, Becky, is playing across the street with her friend Rachel and the sky is full of white billowy clouds. The new woman who recently moved into the empty place beside Rachel’s house pulls her car into her driveway, unbuckles he baby from the back and walks into her house. Tom stops raking to admire her blond hair, California-blond, bleached-out but still healthy looking, which is ironic, Tom thinks. Tom knows he’d never have noticed the hair, or at least the health of it, the blond of it, the irony of it, if Maria hadn’t commented on it. They haven’t introduced themselves to this new neighbour yet, but Tom and Maria watch her and Tom assumes, because of this, that hey know a lot about her. The other neighbours have said things. Rachel’s mother, Trish, has mentioned her. They know her name is Dayton. Dayton from California living now in Canada. The baby is Carrie, which reminds tom of the Stephen King movie, of pig’s blood and periods, of a hand coming out of a grave. That movie made Tom uncomfortable. Who would name their child Carrie? Someone named Dayton, he supposes. Tom sighs. Although that’s such an old movie now, Dayton might not even know about it. She looks young. Early thirties? Late twenties? Or maybe it’s just the hair. The name. Maybe she’s older than Tom and Maria. Tom scratches his head and continues raking. there is a dog barking some, but tom isn’t sure where. There are many dogs in the neighbourhood and they are often barking. This includes Tom’s dog.

Berry has given readers a means of defining their reality with this book. The inhabitants of Edgewood Street in Parkville could be easily them or their neighbours in their own quiet lives. And the threats, fears and anxieties that the residents of the street have – cancer, peer pressure, financial obligations, ‘stranger danger’ – could easily fit into the thoughts of any resident of any other quiet street that exists.

Pages 91-93

Hot potato, dodge ball, who’s got the bone. Jude has distinct memories of each of these games, of how he felt playing them, of how they made him feel. Telephone – when everyone sat in a circle an passed the message around until it became so wildly skewed that it had not connection to the original.

At the beginning he watched the grey team, but now it’s the white team he’s taken with. There’s something about their hair under their helmets, the way it comes mostly past their shoulders and is all different – curling or straight, ponytail or loose. their hair is nice to watch, but he also likes their laughter. Peeling. Ringing. High-pitched laughter. Their camaraderie. The way they high-five each other, or pat each other with their sticks. Jude loses himself in these nights, forgets all the things he wants to forget, concentrates on the ice.

Late in the fall Jude was walking out from the rink one night on his way home. He had been sullenly watching the grey team – they weren’t impressing him. Too competitive, too angry. But then he hear the laughter coming from the change room and he stopped and listened. Like bells. A few gruff snorts. Cackles,. That’s when he decided to watch the white team. To forget about the grey team and focus instead on the white. When their laughter rang around him and sent a shiver up his spine. They sounded like they were having so much fun and Jude wanted to be part of it – in some way – he wanted to share in the laughter. So he checked their schedule on the internet and he hasn’t missed a game since.

***

He interested in them sexually. He doesn’t want them or lust after them or think about them in any way like that. Jude is interested in them mainly because they fill something that is empty inside of him. When he’s here, in the arena, he feels full. When he goes home, he feel empty. But when he leaves the rink on Wednesday nights he doesn’t think about them again until the next Wednesday. The don’t come into his dreams. If Jude were to run into them on the street he wouldn’t even recognize them or make the connection. When he’s here, though on Wednesday night, his mind and body feel satiated.

Berry’s descriptions are simple, but they convey the complex thoughts and emotions her characters experience. She clearly documents in anxiety, curiosity, fear, anger and confusion into the different peoples she has living on this street. A reader can’t help but have empathy for these residents and in turn a reader can’t help but ponder their own thoughts and emotions while reading this book.

Page 112

Just now, when Dayton watched Caroline head home down the empty, dark street, she wished, with all her heart, that she was as lucky as Claire. Claire has it all: Ralph, he kind husband; two nice children; a safe, easy home for her daughter to head towards. Claire has everything. Even the little argument she had with Caroline on the phone about picking her up. Even that was done well. It’s not fair, Dayton thought.

Dayton wishes that she had that scanner she was talking about in the grocery store. She would scan everything she wants in life, just bleep things into the hand-held device and, at the end of it all, she would drive her car up to the back of a store and load everything into it: a father for her baby, a house, a job, money, the legal right to live here, her groceries, even clothes, everything. Maybe she’d even scan another cat to keep Max company. Bleep.

Upstairs Carrie begins to cry. Dayton sighs and stands. She brushes the fur off her lap, makes sure the fur off her lap, makes sure the front door is locked, turns off the lights in the hall and downstairs, and climbs the stairs to see what Carrie needs. The smell hits her when she reaches the landing.

Michelle Berry has documented the often-untalked about thoughts, fears and emotions of suburbia in her book Interference. Simply-written and gripping, it is a book that quite honestly does what literature is suppose to do – document an element of the human condition and bring it forward for discussion.